Feb 2022 is when they started transitioning from pcr's for everyone to home tests.
May 2023 is when they declared an "end to the public emergency" and ended the emergency and stopped requiring hospitals to test people.
This year they stopped requiring hospitals to report much of anything.
I guess this is just how it's going to be from now on, and we'll have to figure out what damage it's doing by analyzing excess death rates
BTW many parts of the US (Hawaii and SF, and my little town apparently) and world are experiencing a pretty sizeable covid surge at the moment. Most likely from the FLiRT variant, and there is also a different variant coming up called kp.3, so that's fun.
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All I can say is to continue to wear PPE whenever you are in public. An N95 mask gives you near 100% protection from harmful aerosols when worn correctly. I will take that over not being able to walk to the grocery store anymore in half a decade…or worse. Everyone likes to say no one else is doing anything so how does me doing something make a difference, but it does. You’re not trying to save the world, but presumably you want to protect yourself and anyone you are six degrees of Kevin Bacon with, as someone here so eloquently put it, and you can absolutely do that. There are things we individually can’t do a whole lot about, but wearing a proper respirator when you’re around other people has immediate material benefits to not only your own health but the health of everyone around you. I am immunocompromised so I understand the burnout, believe me. I had a vibrant social life before all of this, I went to weekly tabletop and card game meetups, fighting game tournaments, I had a tennis league… but all of that is gone now because we won’t make it safe for me, or for anyone. Everyone is susceptible to long Covid or worse, but people like me roll a d4 constitution save instead of a d20, and when people abandon masking and taking any precaution at all writ large like we have it’s really, really despair inducing. So please believe me when I tell you it’s not over and it’s not mild.